How can a lazy DM challenge an optimized party?

[Endarire]

(I'm asking this question for a friend.)

I tend to optimize characters, parties, and whatever else I can.  My GM tends to pull creatures out of MM1, or just give 'em arbitrary stats.  What other viable options exist for the GM who wants to use stock creatures against a party designed to mow 'em down?

[AyeGill]

Well, shit, if your party is putting in the effort, I guess he'll have to do some work as well. Unless he's just gonna throw higher-CR stuff at you.

[veekie]

Quick and dirty, double the number of creatures of the right CR. Very few things are as consistently effective as action economy and simply not being able to crush one thing with massive overkill.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Yeah that.

3e's game math doesn't work quite as supposedly "right" as 4e.
But some of the same things can work.
Level +1 is basically a +1 bonus to everything.
All things being equal ... (even though they aren't and can't be)
... giving monsters a +2 (= Level+2) should always do the trick.
Excepting real C.O. of course.

I mean +3 to everything a monster has, should beat the !@$#
out of anything PCs can do. Should.

[Drammor]

What other viable options exist for the GM who wants to use stock creatures against a party designed to mow 'em down?

Present the monsters in a non-hack-n'-slash manner. Utilize politics, like giving the PCs a mission to mediate a negotiation for peace between a band of lizardfolks and a clan of kobolds. Both sides will attempt to use subterfuge to cheat the other side at the talking table, and both sides will try sending assassins to eliminate both the PCs and each other.

There. Now the party has a chance to show off their elite monster killing skills, and can be challenged at the same time.

However, if this is too much work for your DM, then I suggest just getting a DM who doesn't mind doing a little work for the sake of the group. Everyone needs to participate, and nobody should be half-assing it.

[linklord231]

(I'm asking this question for a friend.)

I tend to optimize characters, parties, and whatever else I can.  My GM tends to pull creatures out of MM1, or just give 'em arbitrary stats.  What other viable options exist for the GM who wants to use stock creatures against a party designed to mow 'em down?

My DM did pretty much what you're describing for the last 10 or so levels of our epic campaign, but with the ELH instead of the MM1.  He just took the special abilities and qualities of the creatures and disregarded things like attack bonuses, saves, etc.  The creatures AC became "Whatever the Fighter hits on a 5 on her first attack", saves were "saves on an 11, always", and attack bonuses were (average AC - 10) for first attack.  HP usually stayed the same, or else got doubled if it was a "hard fight" and arbitrarily increased to 1000 if it were a boss/equivalent. 

Note:  I hated his method.  It made pretty much all fights feel exactly the same, because most of the time he ended up forgetting about a monster's special attacks and just full attacking every round anyway. 

[10d10]

Note:  I hated his method.  It made pretty much all fights feel exactly the same, because most of the time he ended up forgetting about a monster's special attacks and just full attacking every round anyway.

Yeah, I was going to ask if that method was any kind of fun, because it sounded annoying to me. Laziness can only go so far for a DM... One of the DMs from our group (I quit his table, actually) was DMing an adventure from Pathfinder, and all he did was to read the exact lines from the book to us, put the enemies on the table and everything went very automatic from there.

I mean, its ok to use the monsters from the books, and the best thing would be (as some posted before) to put a higher CR on those monsters if your players are tough, but if the DM is into the game enough to at least remind special abilities from the enemies or maybe give them something different, it'll make things challenging and fun.

[linklord231]

Yeah, since then we've started a new campaign, and he's gotten much better about using special abilities and using higher - CR'd monsters. 
On the other hand, I feel like if he HADN'T used a quick-and-dirty method like he did before we'd never have gotten to play.  He was getting ready to graduate college at the time, and was too busy with real life to plan D&D adventures.  Understandable, but unfortunate. 

[Unbeliever]

Quick and dirty, double the number of creatures of the right CR. Very few things are as consistently effective as action economy and simply not being able to crush one thing with massive overkill.

+1, I usually recommend CR +2 (any higher and numbers like saves and DCs often get really out of whack), double hp, and then throw 1.5 - 3 times as many opponents as you'd expect.  You can use waves, if you like as that gives you more flexibility and can let you gauge things on the fly.

I hate the method of just taking the PCs' stats and then eyeballing others.  Of course, you're supposed to take their stats into account a little bit.  If there's a tank I tend to throw in things he can tank against, etc.  But, just using them as a measuring stick almost completely devalues the numbers on their character sheet.  I feel those are supposed to mean something, though not what many people typically take them to mean. 

[Thurbane]

Use monsters from the MM2 - some of them are crazy under-CR'd (Adamantine Horror).

On the other hand, some are also crazy over-CR'd. 

[RobbyPants]

Quick and dirty, double the number of creatures of the right CR. Very few things are as consistently effective as action economy and simply not being able to crush one thing with massive overkill.

This is probably the easiest.

Other easy approach: give a weeks notice, and post a CO monster/NPC request here and give the party's specifics in the OP. Have someone else do the work.

[AyeGill]

Quick and dirty, double the number of creatures of the right CR. Very few things are as consistently effective as action economy and simply not being able to crush one thing with massive overkill.

This is probably the easiest.

Other easy approach: give a weeks notice, and post a CO monster/NPC request here and give the party's specifics in the OP. Have someone else do the work.

Seconded. We're happy to do that sort of work for him.

[Basket Burner]

Easy way to make credible opposition without having to work for it is to use naturally strong stuff. Casters, dragons, caster dragons, certain other enemy types...

It helps if you make statblocks for things that can work in a wide variety of situations, that way you do the work once but benefit from it many times over.

[TenaciousJ]

A fair amount of outsiders above CR10 can be improved just by changing their feats to be not-awful and handing them one of the reach weapons they're proficient with but never seem to be used in default stat blocks.

[Rejakor]

I usually tweak stats on the fly for encounters.  It takes me less than a minute to jot down stats for a Redhand Goblin Arquebusier, and I can do it in my head if time is an issue.  I rarely run encounters without multiple groups/types of enemies, schticks, terrain, interesting 'named' npcs, etc though so to each their own.  To be honest I like optimized parties better as I can throw more ridiculous situations at them (fighting a hive of giant psychic red ants on a balloon while a black dragon takes passes at them) (fighting a hag that has teleport-by attack and teleports between ice mirrors that smashing them releases frozen bladerager trolls and other beasties) (hanging onto the body of an elder god and being attacked by it's broodkin as it falls through a tear in the astral plane surrounded by nothingness while a manic group of mindpirates chase them in a lightning-powered flying burrowing machine) and expect them to survive.

Sometimes if an encounter was too weak I pull a ninth hour power-up or sudden reveal kind of thing.  Dragonborn ninja drops from the roof, uses Entangling Exhalation on the party, iaijutsu sudden strikes the rogue.  Half-Ogre Expertise Fighter suddenly rages, gets +1 size category from that feat, and is power attacking and shock trooping etc etc.  Wizard pulls out black onyx ewer and smashes it on the floor, portal opens up and 2 negative energy elementals walk through.

It doesn't take a lot of effort to just add stuff in.  Great part is you can just balance on the fly instead of trying to work it out beforehand.

[linklord231]

Easy way to make credible opposition without having to work for it is to use naturally strong stuff. Casters, dragons, caster dragons, certain other enemy types...

It helps if you make statblocks for things that can work in a wide variety of situations, that way you do the work once but benefit from it many times over.

I like to call these enemies with the [awesome] subtype.

[Thurbane]

A fair amount of outsiders above CR10 can be improved just by changing their feats to be not-awful and handing them one of the reach weapons they're proficient with but never seem to be used in default stat blocks.

True - by tweaking the feats on a Barbed Devil in the EtCR game I ran, it became a major opponent for the party, and a memorable battle...

[TenaciousJ]

Just a few days ago I made a really fun fight out of a Justicator with Fly-By Attack, Improved Bull Rush, Knockback, a glaive, and light armor so as not to bog-down his fly speed.

[X-Codes]

Another option: play lower-level games.

Ogres don't have shit to keep track of, and yet they're one of the scariest CR 3 monsters there is.  Class-leveled Orcs can also have a high ratio of lethality to complexity.

[Basket Burner]

Outsiders are all over the place. Some of them you can easily revamp to be a serious threat. Some of them can't do much of anything no matter what.

It all comes down to whether or not they have good spellcasting abilities as making them good at melee is hopeless.